cjames
Contributor
I've been going to Cozumel for 18 years and have seen it go from a quaint little hideaway to the cruise ship destination it is. I like going there; I like to dive there. After the hurricane, frankly I was worried what we would see.
This trip was extra special becuase my 12 year old son, Brennan was getting certified and I wanted everything to be good for him, so....
We arrived on Wednesday on Continental. I've read some reports of flight difficulties, but I can say that we didn't experience any issues. We ended up diving with Blue Angel (Christi was full). I like these guys, they run small boats and they do a good job. Brennan's first two dives were off the beach at Blue Angel / Caribe Blu. The group that I take to Cozumel every Cinco de Mayo did a check out dive there last year, so I had a fairly recent comparison. I knew the reef would be pretty scoured and it was. That said there is still plenty to see. My son has amazing luck when it comes to seeing animals and sure enough we had a school of squid 20 feet from where he was doing his skills.
Forgive the quality of first pic, lots of sand kicked up by new diver
There IS still coral and fish even on the shallow reefs, you just don't have as much diversity smacking you in the face, but here are some of the other critters we saw off the beach...
The soft corals, mostly gorgonians and sea fans are coming back nicely and you can see plenty of small coral heads already populating the denuded reef substrate. I took pictures of some of these to see if I could measure any visible growth when we go back next month. Hard corals grow very slowly, but softies can grow rapidly if the conditions are right. All corals tend to thrive when there is less competition for space. As many have noted, there is a lot of sand covering parts of the reef and clearly in some places causing die off. Its hard not to spend your dive waving sand off or wishing for a really big vacuum cleaner.
Our second day, we were out on the boat and went to San Fransisco and Paradise. San Fransisco definitely had been impacted. There were large sections of the reef that had been covered with sand and after closer inspection of the coral heads, many of the star coral heads had die off on the top. Interestingly, the sponge life even under a layer of sand seemed to be still alive when I blew the sand off of it, possibly not as light needy as corals, not sure. Paradise was better. We had a nice current and got to fly over the reef, which is always fun unless you're trying to take pictures. Here is a few pics from these dives...
You can see that there is still plenty of life, with some die off cause by the sand. Still a really pretty couple of dives.
Continued on next thread...
This trip was extra special becuase my 12 year old son, Brennan was getting certified and I wanted everything to be good for him, so....
We arrived on Wednesday on Continental. I've read some reports of flight difficulties, but I can say that we didn't experience any issues. We ended up diving with Blue Angel (Christi was full). I like these guys, they run small boats and they do a good job. Brennan's first two dives were off the beach at Blue Angel / Caribe Blu. The group that I take to Cozumel every Cinco de Mayo did a check out dive there last year, so I had a fairly recent comparison. I knew the reef would be pretty scoured and it was. That said there is still plenty to see. My son has amazing luck when it comes to seeing animals and sure enough we had a school of squid 20 feet from where he was doing his skills.
Forgive the quality of first pic, lots of sand kicked up by new diver
There IS still coral and fish even on the shallow reefs, you just don't have as much diversity smacking you in the face, but here are some of the other critters we saw off the beach...
The soft corals, mostly gorgonians and sea fans are coming back nicely and you can see plenty of small coral heads already populating the denuded reef substrate. I took pictures of some of these to see if I could measure any visible growth when we go back next month. Hard corals grow very slowly, but softies can grow rapidly if the conditions are right. All corals tend to thrive when there is less competition for space. As many have noted, there is a lot of sand covering parts of the reef and clearly in some places causing die off. Its hard not to spend your dive waving sand off or wishing for a really big vacuum cleaner.
Our second day, we were out on the boat and went to San Fransisco and Paradise. San Fransisco definitely had been impacted. There were large sections of the reef that had been covered with sand and after closer inspection of the coral heads, many of the star coral heads had die off on the top. Interestingly, the sponge life even under a layer of sand seemed to be still alive when I blew the sand off of it, possibly not as light needy as corals, not sure. Paradise was better. We had a nice current and got to fly over the reef, which is always fun unless you're trying to take pictures. Here is a few pics from these dives...
You can see that there is still plenty of life, with some die off cause by the sand. Still a really pretty couple of dives.
Continued on next thread...
